Mired in combat during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest of Germany, an American soldier wrote in December 5, 1944: “The road to the front led straight and muddy brown between the billowing greenery of the broken topless firs, and in the jeeps that were coming back they were bringing the still living. Read more
U.S. portable flamethrowers were first used in combat during the Guadalcanal campaign in January 1943. It quickly became apparent that the exposed flamethrower operator was vulnerable to Japanese small arms fire. Read more
By the time of the waning of the summer of 1944 in western Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victorious Allied armies had forged a battle line from the Dutch province of Maastricht in the north to Belfort near the Swiss border in the south. Read more
The pages of history tend to dwell on the men who created empires. No matter how ephemeral may be the famed exploits of an Alexander, Caesar or Napoleon, historians have written volumes on their behalf. Read more
They said it couldn’t be done. Doubters chided Henry Ford for declaring that his Willow Run Bomber Plant could turn out a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber every hour. Read more
K Rations remain one of the great icons of World War II. Soldiers either loved them or hated them. Read more
It was the middle of June 1191, and the Third Crusade was bogged down before the walls of Acre, the largest city and chief port of the former Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Read more
On August 2, 1945, two weeks prior to Japan’s surrender, the highest ranking Japanese officer captured during the war in the Pacific was taken on the island of Morotai, Dutch New Guinea. Read more
The October light was beginning to fade as the U.S. Army limousine sped along the autobahn in the American Zone of Occupied Germany. Read more
Seldom was the hand of fate so clearly exposed in the affairs of men as it did during the French and Indian War when Maj. Read more
The Russian Army of World War I is comparatively unknown in the West when compared with the other major combatants of that conflict. Read more
Much of what we know today about World War II are the visual images—both still and moving—that combat photographers took to document all phases of this costly human tragedy. Read more
Fast, graceful, and deadly, the British Supermarine Spitfire was one of the most recognizable and famous fighter planes of World War II. Read more
In the morning hours of July 8, 1520 Hernando Cortés, with the remnants of his army of Spanish adventurers and Indian allies, neared the crest of mountains overlooking the plain of Otumba (the Spanish corruption of the Nahuatl name of Otompan), an Indian city dominating the valley along Cortés’s line of march. Read more
At four-thirty on the morning of March 19, 1916, the sound of gunfire echoed through the streets of Columbus, New Mexico, a border settlement of adobe houses, a bank, a post office and a few stores surrounded by cactus, mesquite and rattlesnakes. Read more
Dusk came early as they boarded the convoy of trucks, their olive-drab forms softened by baggy trousers and heavy field jackets. Read more
Decades of feature films and years of video games have created an image of the World War II American GI and Marine slugging it out against Axis foes with the M1 Garand semiautomatic rifle and the Thompson submachine gun, with the occasional M1 carbine thrown in for good measure. Read more
In early October 1863, three months after the setback at Gettysburg, three months after Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart was rebuked by his esteemed superior Robert E. Read more
For Nazi Party Führer (Leader) and German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, July 20th, 1944 dawned as a routine working day at his principal wartime military headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Fort Wolf) in the East Prussian forest of Rastenburg, some three hundred air miles from Berlin, in what is today Poland. Read more
When Hollywood’s Tyler Perry heard a story about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the U.S. Army’s only all-female, all-Black unit of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) to go overseas in World War II, he knew he had to make a movie about it. Read more
